“It is just common sense to me that if you believe in compassion and justice you cannot treat the animals the very opposite simply because they are weaker or because they have less intelligence. It’s not our business to judge these things. They have the type of intelligence they need to exist.” - Peter Singer

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Reviewing The Vegetarian Myth

Wow, I am quite amazed at this review written by a raw vegetarian. All I can guess is that this is the only 'educational' book she has read on the matter because the arguments against a vegetarian diet are poorly thought out and inadequately researched - from obligate carnivores to vegangelical ideas caused by brain problems due to a lack of saturated fat. And how does the author's arguments against soy, valid or not, give animal products a big tick?

The reviewer's 'realisation' that agriculture is murder because mice, etc, get killed when harvesting crops is a bit slow off the mark, and really, quite irrelevant. What has that got to do with going veg? Does she think that eating meat will actually stop animals dying? Does she know that animals raised for meat eat most of these crops?

Does she really think "Grains kill"??

The solution is that we should buy locally and animals belong on ecologically sound farms. With the demand for meat to be part of billions of peoples meals every day there is no ecologically sound way to farm all these animals. The ecologically sound way to save the planet is to stop with the animal products!

Admittedly, I haven't read this book myself, but the arguments raised in this review are naive and simplistic non sequiturs. And I am surprised that the reviewer has not heard them all and debunked them before.

The way she thinks is typical for anti-veg/vegan people. They don't want to debate, the only want to attack. It is pure populism and nothing else. We can't avoid all animal suffering so lets go kill some more? the same reasoning can also be applied to other things: we can't avoid all pollution, so lets pollute some more! right. We can't avoid all human suffering so...It just doesn't make any sense at all, but it is simple and gives people a good laugh. And that is how they win.